---
title: “What a place you must hunt whiskers in?” he mumbled savagely. — Irish Fairy Tales · tree and pragmatics
description: “What a place you must hunt whiskers in?” he mumbled savagely. Who acts: place. A sentence of «Irish Fairy Tales» by James Stephens, Chapter IV, with its dependency tree and the pragmatics of every clause.
---

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[Mova](https://md.mova.elamur.ai/free/en/) · [this page in HTML](https://mova.elamur.ai/free/en/corpora/tales/pg2892/59/8/)

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# Irish Fairy Tales, Chapter IV, sentence 8

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“What a place you must hunt whiskers in?” he mumbled savagely.

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**Who acts:** place · **What happens:** hunt in, mumble · **To what, where:** whiskers · **Speech:** someone speaks here

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This is a sentence of «Irish Fairy Tales» by James Stephens, Chapter IV. The page gives its syntax tree — a dependency tree in the style of Universal Dependencies — and its pragmatics clause by clause: who acts (place), what happens, when and where, as Mova's frames read it from the tree.

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**Parsed by Mova, not checked by a teacher.** This tree is Mova's own parse (the `en` model, on the CPU, when the site is built); it may be wrong.

## The tree {#tree}

```conllu
# sent_id = book:pg2892:59:8
# text = “What a place you must hunt whiskers in?” he mumbled savagely.
1	“	"	PUNCT	``	_	7	punct	_	SpaceAfter=No
2	What	what	DET	WDT	PronType=Int	4	det	_	_
3	a	a	DET	DT	Definite=Ind|PronType=Art	4	det	_	_
4	place	place	NOUN	NN	Number=Sing	7	nsubj	_	_
5	you	you	PRON	PRP	Case=Nom|Person=2|PronType=Prs	7	nsubj	_	_
6	must	must	AUX	MD	VerbForm=Fin	7	aux	_	_
7	hunt	hunt	VERB	VB	VerbForm=Inf	13	ccomp	_	_
8	whiskers	whisker	NOUN	NNS	Number=Plur	7	obj	_	_
9	in	in	ADP	IN	_	7	compound:prt	_	SpaceAfter=No
10	?	?	PUNCT	.	_	7	punct	_	SpaceAfter=No
11	”	"	PUNCT	''	_	7	punct	_	_
12	he	he	PRON	PRP	Case=Nom|Gender=Masc|Number=Sing|Person=3|PronType=Prs	13	nsubj	_	_
13	mumbled	mumble	VERB	VBD	Mood=Ind|Number=Sing|Person=3|Tense=Past|VerbForm=Fin	0	root	_	_
14	savagely	savagely	ADV	RB	_	13	advmod	_	SpaceAfter=No
15	.	.	PUNCT	.	_	13	punct	_	_
```

## Pragmatics {#pragmatics}

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| # | verb | tense, mood | who | what, whom | to whom | where | when | other | roles by |
| --- | --- | --- | --- | --- | --- | --- | --- | --- | --- |
| 1 | **hunt in** *in a quote* | must | what place | whiskers |  |  |  |  | vn hunt-35.1 «NP V NP»: agent=Agent whisker=Theme |
| 2 | **mumble** *speech: other* | past | place |  |  |  |  | savagely *property* | vn manner\_speaking-37.3 «NP V that S»: agent=Agent clause=Topic |

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One row per clause the reader finds. «not said here»: a role filled from the clause above. «roles by»: a VerbNet class and frame when one fits the verb, else the reader's rules on the tree.

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**Text:** «Irish Fairy Tales» by James Stephens, Project Gutenberg book 2892 (public domain in the USA). **Tree:** Mova's own parse, Elamur Cosmic License. **Frames:** Mova's frames reader (`prag`), the chapter read in order.

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